Free After the Fire by Jane Rule Page B

approach to Karen.
    “You’re old enough to be my father,” Karen said.
    “Is Hilly right about you then? Don’t you like men?”
    “No friend of Milly’s is a friend of mine,” Karen said, anger overcoming her fear.
    “Don’t you?” Chas demanded again.
    “Don’t she what?” Adam asked, belligerent himself by this time of night.
    “Ah, nothing,” Chas said, giving Adam a friendly-jab in the arm.
    Karen saw how old Chas Kidder really was, how easily a younger man could deflect and defeat him. She thought of her father who didn’t have to try to pick up young women in bars because he had his pick among his college students.
    In fact, Karen didn’t much like men though that had nothing to do with her being attracted to women. She felt sorry for women who were attracted to men, whether they liked them or not. But, as she drove home, hoping that Sally and Sarah were already asleep, Karen admitted to herself that there weren’t many women she liked either.
    Sally was asleep, but Sarah sat by the fire smoking a joint. The smell gave Karen an instant headache, which triggered her worst memories of social failures in Peggy’s world.
    Sarah offered her a toke. Karen shook her head.
    “You don’t, do you?” Sarah said quietly. “I forgot.”
    “Why should you remember?”
    “I would have made friends if you’d let me, you know,” Sarah said, her tone mildly reproachful. “I always used to admire you. Maybe envy’s a better word.”
    “Me?”
    “You and Peggy were together longer than anyone I knew. People get tired of me.”
    “Peggy got tired of me,” Karen said.
    “She didn’t,” Sarah said. “You could see through her, and she couldn’t stand it.”
    “That’s not true. Peggy’s a better person than most people give her credit for.”
    “She said the only reason you stayed for eight years was that she paid you to do it.”
    “That’s not true!” Karen cried.
    Sally stirred and opened her eyes. “You’re home. Oh, Sarah, do get rid of that stinking thing. That’s why I’ve been having such horrible dreams,”
    “It’s getting harder and harder to find friends with bad habits,” Sarah said, butting her joint.
    “I’ve got to sleep,” Karen said.
    But she couldn’t. She didn’t trust Sarah’s judgment, but her view of what had happened confronted Karen with the fact that she had no view of her own. She had simply accepted Peggy’s. What else could she have done? She could hardly have said, “I am not boring!” It hadn’t occurred to her to ask, “Do you really mean that?” She had seen Peggy willfully hurt other people with dismissive judgments but always as a defense against an attack she saw, or thought she saw, coming. Could she really have thought that Karen stayed on only for the free ride? Might Karen have simply gone out and found a job? Peggy hadn’t given her that option. Anyway, she would have hated it. Peggy needed to feel generous. She needed to feel in control.
    I didn’t see through her, Karen thought. I didn’t even see her clearly. Karen did not want to go over it all again now. It was over, and Peggy wasn’t anyone she needed to understand. She needed only to understand herself, to know that she would never again, under any circumstances, be dependent either financially or emotionally on anyone. Sally and Sarah would be gone tomorrow. For the first time the idea of being alone was a relief.
    Henrietta awoke both exhausted and restless after a day in town. Increasingly often now, she had a sense of living her life on hold, “spinning my wheels” was Hart Jr.’s expression for it; yet why it should be so she didn’t understand. She had no great plans in abeyance. Living life from day to day was what she had always done. It was hard to see Hart in his present state, but he was well looked after, and it was a job beyond her physical strength. She did not look forward to his death, for, even as he was, he was her anchor. She had no appetite for the